Many frequent flyer gurus will tell you to never use your hard - earned miles to
book a domestic award ticket.
Not exact matches
You may even pay fewer points for short - haul
domestic flights than you would
booking an
award ticket.
For example, when I
book award tickets for family with my United miles, change fees are waived and my Premier 1K status carries over to provide priority service, free checked baggage, and complimentary
domestic upgrades.
Unlike many of the
domestic award search engines, British Airways keeps its
award search function squirreled away, far from the easily accessibly cash
ticket booking field on its homepage.
Avios points generally incur a full surcharge when you
book international
award tickets, but
domestic awards within the U.S. remain surcharge - free and are surprisingly affordable on non-stop routes thanks to the Avios distance - based
award chart.
Though I'm primarily discussing economy redemptions here, I also wanted to mention that
booking through Virgin Atlantic, you can get first - class
award tickets for
domestic travel in the U.S. for an absolute steal: just 45,000 miles.
While we all enjoy
booking an extravagant first class
award to Asia and getting a massive amount of value out of our miles, the truth is
award tickets simply aren't available every time we want to
book and some travel needs like
domestic economy
tickets don't offer such great value.
$ 25 - 35 telephone reservations fee — If you need to call to
book your
award, you'll pay $ 25 per
ticket for
domestic award and $ 35 for
awards that involve international travel.
If you're looking to
book international flights in premium cabins, those fares tend to be quite a bit higher than
domestic first, so while you'll still get two cents per points in value, you'll likely need fewer points or miles to
book traditional
award tickets.
However at a value of 2 cents a mile, you would still have to
book an
award ticket that normally costs $ 250 one way in Economy to get that value per mile on a
domestic flight.
Even though you don't earn elite miles on
award tickets and I value my airline elite status greatly, there's something extremely satisfying about
booking an expensive
domestic flight and only paying $ 2.50 in fees, which is what most carriers charge per segment on
domestic US flights (plus any
ticketing fees).
As you saw with the example, it's complicated because while a cash
ticket (including those
booked through the Ultimate Rewards portal) has all taxes and fees included in the price, an
award ticket also is charged taxes and fees ($ 5.60 in the case of a
domestic US
ticket).
Normally, a
domestic business class
ticket costs 50,000 miles roundtrip (possibly less if you're
booking a distance - based
award), a roundtrip to Europe is 50,000, while Asia is around 110,000.
- Miles & More is the mileage program of Lufthansa as well as Austrian and SWISS, and members get more access to premium
award tickets - All three airlines are part of Star Alliance, so you can use these miles on any of the 27 partner airlines including US Airways and United (and Miles & More
awards can be
booked one - way, which US Airways
awards can not)- You can
book a roundtrip
domestic business class
award on United and US Airways for 35,000 miles, or a first class
ticket for 50,000 miles.
-LSB-...] American has charged $ 25 per
domestic ticket and $ 35 per international
ticket to
book award tickets by phone.